raisetheearth | Factor Industries Charity Event: October 18th, 2016

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Factor Industries Charity Event: October 18th, 2016

Even for Benjamin Factor, arranging this charity event had been something of a challenge. Just as he held great influence in Gateway City, Thunder Corp's influence in Locke was great as well. But with time and money, all things were indeed possible in this case, and the Memorial Dance Hall was playing host to the night's events. It was a glamorous affair: politicians, captains of business, dignitaries, and celebrities had been invited. For whatever controversy that existed, the world legitimately wanted to heal the wounds left by the invasion, and that meant there were a lot of people who wanted to use events like this to either advance that cause, or to make themselves look good.

But they weren't the only sorts of individuals who had recieved an invitation.

Benjamin Factor had also made it so the Numbered would be invited to his little party. Arrivals through the teleporter would be greeted by drivers at the community center, and the same courtesy was extended to anyone who might live in Locke. The only stipulation? Was that anyone who came make an effort to make themselves presentable. If that was a problem, or anyone arrived without knowing, they had clothes on hand for people to change into.

Indeed, it seemed that the Numbered would be well provided for tonight. That being said, their presence would get people to talk, given the presence of news crews making live coverage. Nevertheless... "getting people to talk" seemed to be exactly what Benjamin Factor wanted to happen.

[Event Links: Event Speakers | NPC Interaction | General Mingle]

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At some point, Winter and Lily aren't together. That's about the point when Summer saunters over, in a tight black dress that leaves little to the imagination and bares her shoulders, smiling faintly. Tonight is a pretty good night - people are aware that Winter is here, so she can't just casually dominate conversation by being someone she's not. But at the same time... she is still a reincarnate. So she can capitalize on things still.

Which doesn't make her any less inclined to be a pain. "Good evening, Lily. Enjoying the party? I notice Mr. Factor has provided a complement of fine booze and spirits for those who are of age." Which will not be either Diamond for about two months yet, unfortunately.

Ah, there it is. That right there would be Lily Tsukuyomi's heart leaping up into her throat. She catches sight of Summer on approach - really, how could Lily very well miss her? There is a brief, brief moment of Lily wondering when the hell Winter changed and that maybe she should wear that more oft-- Dammit. Nope.

Nope, nope, nope.

She's rather like a deer caught in the headlights until the doppelganger nears, and she clears her throat. Regaining her composure. Mostly.

"Summer," she intones the name, in a way that sucks as much emotion out of the air around her as possible. "Somehow, I wasn't expecting you here." She peers over Summer's head, looking for her shadow. "I'd guess you're not alone, huh?"

She purses her lips, though. Can't get into a fight here. So she continues, a little more stiffly than normal. "The party's fine, but... no. I think it's better I keep a clear head around here."

Be happy it's not open-backed, Lily. Then it'd be a very interesting case study. In any event, she chuckles as the woman asks about her opposite. "I go where I please, my dear. Very few things stop that, especially as... volatile as parties like this tend to get, hm? Besides, what self-respecting twenty-something turns down free food?" It's a joke in poor taste, considering Lily gets sizable income from book royalties and Summer takes from the corrupt and keeps for herself. Neither of them is here for the cocktail weenies.

"I'm Rose's partner, not her babysitter. If she wants to stick close, she can, and I'll be happy. If she has other things to do..." She shrugs lightly. "That's her decision. In any event, though, I don't disagree about the clear head thing. Just wondered if you knew. He brought the expensive stuff."

Dropping the act for a moment, she turns more serious, glancing across and up to Lily. "I hear you've had a rough couple of weeks. Keeping it together over there?"

It already is an interesting case study, and that's really the problem when you get right down to it. She tries not to make it her focus, because otherwise she's not going to be able to keep her focus. Still, she can't bite back: "Summer, you're like a year and a half old."

Look. Lily never said she wasn't petty.

She doesn't quite buy the comment about Rose entirely - in fact, that just confirms she's here. Somewhere. The few times Lily's faced Rose head-to-head in any form, be it verbally or on the battlefield, her double's capacity for contempt to Lily never really... subsided beyond falling away from "homicidal." She knows that much. Summer chatting her up alone feels like something that could end poorly, but for now she tries to bite her tongue. This is a social gathering and there's not much Lily can do - something she imagines Summer knows.

So, she keeps her eyes peeled, and cutting through the small talk she eyes her back at that last comment. "Just fine. So don't worry, you don't need to sharpen that knife for my back just yet."

Edited (repeated words, woooo) 2015-10-20 21:37 (UTC)

"And I have all of Winter's memories before then. It counts," she smoothly replies, a glass of punch in one hand. By the look on her face, she dearly wishes something stronger were in it.

The glance back, though, speaks volumes. "Don't get prissy with me. I know you have a hard time with the idea, but I do want to help sometimes. I did get on your case about making favors, but... you can't do a whole lot of fighting when April's fussing over you, and that means I have to pick up the slack. In the interest of doing less work later, I don't mind doing a little work now." Sighing softly, she shakes her head. "I know I paint myself as a bitch. I act like one, too. But I'm not that far removed from your precious partner. You don't have to worry so much. I keep the knife sharp, but I don't expect I'll need it. Not for you."

Lily wants to make a smart remark to Summer's first reply, but she reels back the instinct. It's almost too easy, in a way. Plus, it's a notable reminder to the fact that Summer thus has all of those memories from Winter before her creation. So once again, she remembers that Summer knows Lily... more intimately than she can truly be comfortable with, but there's little she can do about it, either.

So she frowns, and listens, looking forward out at the crowd again. The words hit her and send a bit of a shiver up her spine at that last part - she's not sure if it's sweet, scary, or a little of both.

"Seems a bit different from how you were talking to me only a month or two ago. Something change, Summer?" It's an honest question, lacking a lot of the venom she'd been saving up at first sight of her from before.

For a tiny moment, Summer lets her guard drop. Under the airy tone, the teasing, the conscious distance... there's a certain lack of vitality. Almost a tension, behind it. "I'm tired, Lily. I like being an asshole, I like being able to be the bad guy. You know what Winter's like, and you know being good is just as exhausting for her, sometimes. I know what watching over you that first June felt like. I have no desire to feel that. I'd sooner start a localized ice age to work off the frustration and the anger. You probably know that, too."

She looks off to the far side for the room for a moment, with an expression that fairly clearly reads what the hell am I doing? to someone with any insight into Winter's moods. "Everything I've said before still applies. I'm never going to be part of baby's first strike team. I still reserve the right to kill you if you're out of hand. But I don't always want to be the bad guy. Like she and I are in the first place... there has to be balance. Sometimes I can do good, too. Sometimes, I want to do good, to be a good person, even if I look weird in the process." Her face heats up, and the moment she notices, she turns away, quietly adding, "Is that so wrong?"

That all... brings Lily's brain to an absolute screeching halt. It was easy to stand back from afar and look at Summer and Rose as ... not quite people. As their evil twins. As monsters. They were after all created by a monster, right? Still, there are things in there that is enough to reach at her very heart, and that makes reconciling her image of Summer with what she's actually seeing very difficult.

'That first June,' when Lily had been so horribly injured. Physically and mentally. It had taken both her and Winter so much effort to pick themselves back up, to act again, to move on with their lives. Through all that, Winter had been her rock, supporting her, and... Summer remembers every moment of that. Vividly, she's sure.

"If I'm sure that you'll have no reason to kill me, then I guess that leaves you with the rest, for now at least."

As Summer's face heats up and she looks away, Lily blinks. She's embarrassed? In that moment, she looks more like Winter than she ever has, and that's a little bothersome in a number of ways. Still...

"That's not wrong, no. You just have sort of a weird way of showing it, a lot of times. I know what you can do, what you might do, and at least what you were once willing to do. But... It would probably be nice if you could be that person, sometimes."

She sighs, shrugging a little. "Even if I don't have much to gain from it besides having one less knife at my throat, I'm sure there's some people out there that would benefit a lot. Like... Rose, I imagine."

Summer sighs, shaking her head faintly. A little bit of the fight comes back into her tone, even if she's still not really being her usual, abrasive self. "You know what your partner's like. I was created to be her shadow. Her darkness. What I want... might take some time to realize. When you start with anger and ambition and not a whole lot else, it takes..."

She trails off for a second. Talking to one of the originals about herself is weird. All the doppelgangers understand their nature without needing an explanation. Lily knows a little, but... she doesn't know, truly. "It takes a lot to overcome it even a little bit. I will never be able to stand in the light next to you. There isn't enough strength of personality in the world for that. It's not even doubt. It's just how we are.

"So I do want to be a better person, at least a little bit. But even beyond everything else, change is hard. Something bad happens and I just want to laugh and turn away. Someone's hurting in front of me and the urge is there to throw sand in their face. Having to fight that is more difficult than you can imagine." The desire to help, and the desire to harm... Summer knows, without a doubt, that she's a mirror of Winter in that respect. "But still, I want to try." A little more of her usual swagger comes into her voice, as she snorts. "If Little Miss Wisdom can rally an entire YouTube channel behind her, surely it can't be that hard."

Rose, though. Summer stops cold for a second, deflating a tiny bit again. "Rose is... a consideration, too. We like living dangerously, don't get me wrong. But when things get hard for you, you can just take a step back and hide in your cozy little getaway. We don't have that. Once you've made enemies like we have, you can never truly rest easily." Blood money, a beautiful villa in Paris, she thinks she's got the title to at least one private jet tucked away somewhere. The benefits are many, but the risks aren't anything to sneeze at.

Hearing that 'fight' come back into Summer's done is weirdly... reassuring? Lily's not entirely sure if she can properly explain it, but she was starting to worry for a moment something terrible had happened to dramatically shift Summer's outlook, as opposed to it being a natural progression of trying to change herself. It seems more the latter, so... that's progress, right?

Still. What she says makes sense. Summer, Rose, any of them... They have the memory of what their originals were in the past, and their reincarnated memories on top of that. Yet their nature drives them towards the opposite, and no matter how much one may consider it, sometimes your nature and the way you are just can't be fought. Maybe sometimes, it shouldn't be fought entirely, lest you erase what makes you, 'you.'

...ugh. Her therapist is starting to leak into her train of thought.

So, she nods. "It might be more difficult than I might imagine, but if you want to change, even that 'little bit,' and are thinking about those things then... that's better than nothing. It's quite good, in fact. That you want to try is..." She manages to smile a little bit. "I'm happy for that, at least. You might not be Winter, but you're still connected to her, and I imagine she doesn't want anything too bad to happen to you either, in the long run. We might not exactly be sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner, but... If you could be someone you're happy to be, I'd be glad for that to happen."

The reaction to her mentioning Rose is curious, and enough to light just a bit of amusement in Lily's eyes. "You two might not be able to escape the same way we can, but... If Rose is really my opposite, I can imagine a lot of the things she's dealing with, on a day to day basis." Including, but not limited to, being manipulated and used by her now-dead sister. Lily knows that would haunt her for ages, and she's still dealing with the fact she killed her. Rose... probably has a lot more baggage there. "If she's still at your side, I think that says a lot for you both. She has someone, at least, she can retreat back to, and... I imagine, so do you."

Whether or not Summer can admit that through her pride is another matter, of course.

She's not sure she appreciates that Lily understands without particular issue, but Summer knows when to take a positive event and run with it. "She's probably not as militant about it as I am, but I... would hope so. And I have a feeling she'll try and ask. If you catch her doing that, pass along my mildly polite refusal. I'll even let you put whatever halfhearted reason you'd like in my mouth. It's a special gift for dealing with me tonight." She pointedly doesn't do anything like thanking Lily for understanding. That would be... very un-Summer-like, enough that she keeps that thought to herself but makes a mental note to maybe send her a note or something. Maybe she'll start a grand tradition of Christmas cards and send exactly one.

The Rose thing, though... "She deals with a lot. I put a lot of pressure on myself, but she just has a lot of shit on her back, all the time. And she still finds it in her to keep me sane." How does she do that, anyway? It's a very, very fancy trick. "I do what I can for her. Contrary to popular belief, I do feel normal human emotions like affection and concern." And she likes having them returned, which she doesn't answer aloud, though her cheeks will probably continue to do that for her as she can't quite maintain a glare in Lily's general direction.

Summer may pointedly not be thanking Lily, but the smile on her face says she takes it as one anyway. Hey, she's an author - she's supposed to be able to read between the lines. Of course, it's not that Summer doesn't still make her just a little bit uncomfortable - she does, and that's probably not going to change anytime soon. Still, this is a start, and... She's pretty satisfied with that, so far.

Of course, she could just leave well enough alone, but... Something tells her to keep along.

"If you say so, Summer," she says, her voice a touch amused. She calms it down as she continues beyond that, though. "I can't say a lot about Rose, I haven't seen her many times she hasn't been used against us, but..." She sighs and shakes her head. "I know her better than just about anyone, obviously. If you are taking care of her, I'm happy. But..."

She casts her gaze away from Summer, as if looking for someone of equal height and purple hair to herself. It's partly also her polite way of acting like she's not paying mind to the color of Summer's face, even if sh eis.

"If she's anything like me, she's probably also sitting on a lot. If I'm willing to put certain things out there, there are probably similar aspects she's... afraid to. If I'd have a guess, anyway."

Talking about Rose is more comfortable for Summer than talking about herself, and she's slowly getting her equilibrium back. Though it's taking a bit. "I'm taking care of her as best I can," she repeats, a little sharply. "She does hide things from me, but I think that's just because she doesn't want me to worry about her. I'm certain she gets that from a certain someone." Ah, there's the superior smirk that belongs. "I don't begrudge her that, but it's a pain when I'm trying to save her from herself. Much like my brighter half, I'd rather help her before things explode."

Casting her gaze across the room, much like Lily, she catches Rose somewhere distant. Her lips curl into a soft smile, but she turns back to Lily after a second. Better not to lead her right to what she's looking for. "We're not the same as you," she continues softly. "The two of you walked hand in hand through hell, and you came out as pretty little social butterflies, fighting every problem you came up against with kindness and love and purity and honestly. Makes me sick, but it's demonstrably effective. It took a few pity parties, but you got there. It'll be a little slower for us, but bit by bit, we'll get there. It's going to involve some love, and since kindness, and a whole lot of indulgence and violence." Her smile now is somewhere between dangerous and... well, one of Winter's best. "Look forward to it!"

Lily raises her eyes at the thinly veiled accusation of where Rose picks up some of her habits, and she... actually chuckles. It almost surprises her too, but she rolls with it, smiling a lot brighter.

"I'm certain she does, but at the same time..." She shakes her head. "I would have imploded. I would have... destroyed myself. You know that. You've seen that. You can remember that. Rose... might actually be stronger there, in some respects. We are opposites, hm? If I'd lost my sister like that, I'm not sure... I could have stood up again so soon after. As much as it may hurt her, maybe she can actually take a bit more than me, in some ways. Maybe whatever she's keeping back, you don't need to be as gentle about to get her honesty."

She draws in another sharp laugh, remembering how Rose... introduced herself to the world. "Lord knows she doesn't have much difficulty being honest as it is."

Lily listens to the rest then, and while she's not wholly keen on the whole "violence" part, she can't really deny the rest of it. "You're not wrong. We have been through hell, but... so have you. You remember all of that before, right? And... you've faced your own hardships since. You might even underestimate where that puts you, a bit." She sucks in a deep breath, nodding then, partly to herself. "Summer, we're never exactly going to be the best of friends, and I'm pretty sure we're going to be at odds eventually. But... I do want the best. For both of you. Rose has my memories, her blood is my own. The same is true for you and Winter. We're always going to be tied together, so no matter what... I hope you can be happy, somehow."

"I'm not qualified to say one of you is stronger than the other," she starts cautiously. "Both of you have gone through a lot of shit. I've seen a lot of it on your side, and I've been there for a lot of it on hers. But I'm confident enough to say she's at least as strong as you are. So... yeah. She'll be okay. I don't like prying in this kind of situation, but I'll manage. She needs my compassion more than I need peace of mind." It's kind of a rough thing to be thinking about, considering the possibilities, but she'll manage.

Pausing a moment while Lily collects her thoughts, Summer sighs. "It kind of comes as part of the package. No inhibitions, crazy powers, general dislike from day one. I don't really think about it much until things get worse, and then it hits me like a ton of bricks. But we have the strength to get up and keep moving again. Both of us. So..." She takes a short, slightly rattling breath as the implications hit her. "I want to be happy. I want to earn it, without having to take it from good, honest people. I can't feel good about that. So... we'll do what we can. I'll do what I can."

The haughty assurance yields, for just a moment, to easy conviction with a soft smile. In that moment, she looks more like the real Winter than she ever has. "It won't look the same as yours. But we'll find our happiness, Rose and I. And I hope you and Winter can find your own. That's the honest truth." Her tone drops a little, but she doesn't let her grin dim at all as she goes on. "If we have to come to blows someday, so be it. You're going to get nothing less then my best when that time comes. Because there's no sense in living if it's by halves and afraid of what tomorrow will bring." Resting back on her heels, she laughs briefly, before turning away from Lily and pondering leaving to go find her partner. "Bring a jacket. You'll need it."

That smile is enough to disarm Lily, momentarily. More than Summer normally can, because in that moment she can see and hear Winter in her. It's... both disturbing, and reassuring. Because it tells her no matter how much they may be their "opposites" it's not necessarily cut and dry, either. They may be violent and harsh, but...

That doesn't mean their ideals or wants are evil, does it?

It also means Rose will be taken care of. Which Lily finds herself finding fundamentally important, in a way she'd never really anticipated.

So instead of looking disturbed, she smiles confidently. "I fully expect that best, Summer. For yourself, Rose, and... us, if necessary. We might butt heads, or we might work together. I'm sure you can guess which one I'd rather have but..."

She crosses her arms and looks back out at the party, that confident look remaining. "You're different, from some others like you. You don't want to just destroy. You want a life. I think... in the end, that'll point you the right way, whether or not we agree on what that is right now."

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Factor Industries Charity Event: October 18th, 2016

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